NEW YORK — A portfolio manager for one of the nation's largest hedge funds accused by the government of cheating to boost sagging results in 2007 was convicted on Wednesday of insider trading charges.

The jury had deliberated for two days.

The case was the first to result from the government's focus on insider trading at SAC Capital Advisors.

The company, based in Stamford, Conn., was founded by billionaire businessman Steven A. Cohen, who hasn't been charged criminally but faces civil claims. This month the company itself agreed to pay a record $1.8 billion to settle civil and criminal insider trading charges.

Steinberg joined SAC in 1996, working for a time in an office next to Cohen, before moving to the New York offices of its Sigma Capital division, prosecutors said.

A spokesman for Steinberg's defense said lawyers wouldn't immediately comment on the verdict. Sentencing is set for April 25. A spokesman for Cohen declined comment Wednesday.

U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara said in a statement that Steinberg had crossed the line into criminal insider trading "like many other traders before him who, blinded by profits, lost their sense of right and wrong."

During the trial, the defense tried to demonize analyst Jon Horvath of San Francisco, saying Horvath committed the insider trading crimes and tried to blame Steinberg to escape what would otherwise be a lengthy prison sentence. Horvath pleaded guilty last year to insider trading charges in a deal with prosecutors that could earn him a significant reduction in any sentence if he cooperates fully.